“When my brother passed away, my body did something I’ve never really seen it do before which was within days,” she said to me.
This is the first time that Hayden Panettiere has discussed how her body responded to the traumatic experience of losing her brother unexpectedly.
The 35-year-old woman sat down with PEOPLE and discussed the events that transpired only a few days after the death of her younger brother Jansen, who had passed awayfrom an enlarged heart that had not been identified.
“When my brother passed away, my body did something I’ve never really seen it do before which was within days,” according to what she told the newspaper.
“I just ballooned out,” she added, referring to her meteoric rise in weight of forty pounds. What I did and what I ate were irrelevant to the situation. Stress and cortisol that are circulating throughout your body might cause it, as I am aware. Now, I believe that my body was defending itself, putting up a barrier between itself and the outside world.
As a result of the agoraphobia that she developed as a result of the sadness she had following the death of her brother, who was 28 years old, she was unable to leave the home for many months.
“I had to see horrific paparazzi pictures of myself coming out of Jansen’s funeral, which happened in a very private place, and it was shocking,” she said to reporters. The person I was didn’t recognize me. It was then that my agoraphobia manifested itself, which is something that I have had trouble with in the past.
“It became a destructive hamster wheel of, do I feel good enough to go out?” she said, adding that it had an effect on her self-esteem.
On the other hand, as time went on, she started to contemplate the possibility of returning to work, and she started walking and working out with a physical therapist named Marnie Alton.
“These long, beautiful walks where we could vent and it would be this therapy session,” she explains further. “Marnie empowered me.”
It’s not simply the workout that’s causing my body to respond; it’s just begun doing so. It made it possible for me to let go of the pressure and the high expectations that I had always placed on myself,” she adds. Her agoraphobia subsided in tandem with the fading of her anxieties. “There’s nothing like looking in the mirror and feeling like you look good enough to walk out the door,” she said to me.
In spite of the fact that Panettiere is now in a better place, the actress went on to express how the loss would continue to be exceptionally painful for her.
“He was my only sibling, and it was my job to protect him,” she claimed in response. “It seemed as if I had lost a portion of my soul when I was separated from him… I will never be able to get over the fact that [he] crushed my heart, and I will never be able to move on from it. It doesn’t matter how many years pass; I will never be able to get over the loss of him.